Errors of Omission
Haplography
The commonest kind of omission is that known as Haplography, by which one only of two identical or similar words is written and the other is left out. In Virgil G. iv. 311, for example, “miscentur, tenuemque magis magis aera carpunt,” some MSS. offer tenuemque magis aera, omitting the second magis. This is an error for which there is great scope in the text of an author like Plautus, who loves to pile up phrases like hic hinc huc transit, and affects assonances like male malus, suavi suavitate. So prone are scribes to this error that I believe that in fifty per cent. of the lines of Plautus, where the same word is repeated or two almost identical words stand side by side, some MS. or other will be found to omit one of the pair. There is therefore every justification for an editor who emends the defective metre of a line by the insertion of a word before or after a word of similar appearance.Omission of name of speaker in dialogue
A not infrequent case of this error in the plays of Plautus is when in a dialogue the remark of one speaker ends with the name of the other speaker in the vocative case. Here in the original the voc. would be immediately followed by the same name, written in full or with contraction, as a “nota personae,” to indicate the speaker of the next remark. An example will be found in Epid. 553, where the two speakers are Philippa and Periphanes. The lines begins with fabulata's, a remark of Periphanes; then Philippa says mira memoras, Periphane, to which Periphanes replies em istuc rectius. The line seems to be preserved rightly in A: “fábulata's. Míra memoras, Périphane. Em istue réctius”; but the minuscule MSS. omit Periphane, the word being regarded as a “nota personae” and not as a part of the line. Many defective lines in Plautus which are divided between two speakers have been successfully emended on this principle.Omission of a syllable or a letter
Sometimes it is not a whole word that is omitted through haplography, but a repeated syllable or even letter. For example, Mil. 54 is rightly written in A thus: “ATPEDITASTELLIQVIAERANTSIVIVIVERENT,” that is “at péditastelli quía erant, sivi víverent,
” “they were mere tag-rag-and-bobtail infantry, so I let them live.” The repetition of the syllable vi proved a stumbling-block to the scribe of P, who wrote si viverent for sivi viverent, leaving a hiatus in the metre (between quia and erant). We may be sure, though we have not the testimony of A to help us, that it is a similar error which has obscured the name of Plautus in Merc. 10, “eadém Latine Mércator Maccí Titi”, where the repetition of the three similarly - written syllables (see ch. vi. § 1) ci-ti-ti led to the corruption mactici in P—a corruption faithfully preserved by B, but in CD changed to mattici. An instance from the original of CD is Pseud. 246, “quid hóc est? quis ést qui morám mi occupáto”, where moram mi, probably written in the archetype1 morammi, became in the original of CD moram, with loss of the pronoun. A particularly common case is the omission of the final letter of a word when the following word begins with the same letter. Thus the words sic cogis, written siccogis, would run great danger of being miscopied sicogis (si cogis), me experti would become mexperti, and so on.
Omission of unintelligible word,
The omission of a word, when due to haplography, is not hard to rectify. But omission is often due to other causes. Sometimes a scribe would deliberately omit a word which he did not understand or which he suspected of being a corruption, and would leave a blank space for it, meaning the corrector2 of the MS. to insert it at the time of revision.3 The omission of his cerebrum uritur (Poen. 770) in B is perhaps to be explained in this way; for the fact that CD have the words (in the corrupt form hisce Crebro auritur) shows us that they stood in the archetype.Omission of Greek word
Many mediaeval scribes were ignorant of the Greek alphabet; and when a Greek word occurred in their original, written in Greek and not Roman letters, they left it for the corrector to supply. Hence the blanks in a twelfth-century Leyden MS. of Aulus Gellius, which are usually accompanied by a marginal note gr[aeca] (see Hertz's Introduction p. lviii).Omission of small word not necessary to sentence
A common case of omission in MSS. of Latin authors is the omission of small, unimportant words, pronouns, particles, and the like, which are not necessary for the apprehension of the sense of the sentence. This plays a great part in the MSS. of Plautus; for this author delights in the otiose use of personal pronouns (ego, tu etc.) or particles (vero, nam etc.), which a scribe who copied clause by clause and not word by word was very prone to omit. In Bacch. 134, for instance, “ibidem égo meam operam pérdidi, ubi tú tuam”, the ego is retained by B, but was dropped in the original of CD. That B is right we see from the quotation of this line by Charisius, who quotes it with ego; but the absence of the pronoun leaves no trace on the sense or metre of the line; and there were probably several lines with this error in P, which afford us no possibility of detecting the omission. A large number of cases of hiatus have been removed by Ritschl from the text by the insertion of small words of this kind into the lines as they are presented in our minuscule MSS. Bacch. 1170 may serve as example. The reading of all our minuscule MSS. is “senex óptime quantumst ín terra, sine hoc exorare ábs te”, leaving the metre (anapaestic) defective. Ritschl restored the metre by inserting me after sine: “sine me hóc exorare ábs te”. The liability of small words such as pronouns and prepositions to be omitted, through the practice of joining them in writing with longer neighbouring words, has been already mentioned in ch. i. § 4: so that editors are justified in resorting to the insertion of words of this kind to remove a hiatus or to supplement the defective number of syllables in a line.Omission of word due to stain on page of archetype
Another cause of the omission of a word or several words or merely part of a word was the fact that it was illegible in the archetype owing to the presence of a stain on the page. The omission of the illegible word would be indicated in the first copy by a lacuna, but in subsequent copies all indication might disappear. The most famous instance of a “blot on the page” is the Bodleian Greek MS. of Arrian's “Dissertations of Epictetus,” where a large portion of the centre of a page (fol. 25 r.) has been made illegible apparently by the pressure of some heavy weight, the leg of a chair perhaps. All other existing MSS. of the “Dissertations” are copied, ultimately or immediately, from this archetype, and omit either the illegible words alone or the whole passage, some with indication that there is a lacuna, others without any indication of the kind. A photograph of the page in question is appended to the Teubner edition of the “Dissertations” (Leipzig 1894).Omission due to hole in leaf of archetype
In the Casina we find in all or some of our minuscule MSS. blank spaces left at regular intervals, indicating the omission of words. At the same intervals we find lines in which no lacuna is indicated in our MSS., but which present a defective number of syllables, a word being patently omitted at the beginning of one line and at the end of another. Omissions of this kind may be referred without hesitation to a hole in the leaf of some archetype; and if we count the number of lines in these intervals, we can estimate the number of lines on a leaf and (by halving that number) on a page of this archetype.4Causeless omission of a word
Where the omission of a word is not due to a blot on the page or a hole in the leaf of the archetype, the omitted word may in the great majority of cases be supposed to be either (1) a word similar to a neighbouring word or identical with it, as in the instances quoted above (<magis> magis, male <malus>), or (2) an unusual form, such as a Greek word, or (3) a small word unimportant to the sense of the sentence, as in <ego> meam operam perdidi. But we must not forget that a word is often omitted from no other apparent cause than the carelessness of the scribe. The omission of juris in the original of CD in Poen. 586: “hódie juris cóctiores nón sunt, qui lités creant”, does not come under any of the classes which have been mentioned, and is probably a quite inexcusable piece of negligence on the part of the writer. So in a passage of Nonius (21. 18) the scribe of the Laurentian MS. has passed over the word genus, though it is written plainly in his original, the Leyden MS.Confusion with similar words
The omission also of a syllable or a letter, though usually due to haplography (§ 3) or to the confusion of one word with another of similar appearance, e.g. filia for facilia (ch. v), or to the fact that the syllable was expressed by a contraction symbol, e.g. piratus for periratus (ch. vii. § 2), is occasionally merely a case of illiterate copying. In Virg. A. iv. 491, for example, MSS. offer descere for descendere; in G. iii. 4 im for jam; in G. iii. 154 arior for acrior; in A. vi. 708 indunt for insidunt.Omission of a line or passage
The omission of a word like malus or magis in the examples male <malus>, <magis> magis, may have been intentional. It was unintentional if the eye of the writer passed at the moment of writing from the one group of letters to the other similar or identical group. But it was intentional if the writer regarded male malus as a miswriting, left uncorrected in the original (see ch. iv. § 3), and magis magis as an error of dittography (ch. iv. § 4). About the omission of a line or passage there is seldom this doubt. In the great majority of cases it is due to two lines having had the same ending, so that the eye of the copyist, as he was finishing the one line, wandered to the ending of the other. In the Miles Gloriosus v. 554 ends with the words quod viderim, and so does v. 556: “fateór. Quid ni fateáre id ego quod víderim?Et ibi ósculantem meum hóspitem cum ista hóspita
vidísti. Vidi: cúr negem quod víderim?
” The consequence is that vv. 555-6 were omitted in P, and would have been lost to us if we had not the testimony of A for this passage. The same thing has happened in a passage of Horace,
where certain MSS. omit v. 50. And it is an error of very common occurrence in MSS. of all authors. St. Jerome, commenting on a passage of the Prophet Jeremiah (xxx. 14): “propter multitudinem iniquitatis tuae, dura facta sunt peccata tua. Quid clamas super contritione tua? insanabilis est dolor tuus; propter multitudinem iniquitatis tuae et propter dura peccata tua feci haec tibi”, explains the omission in the Septuagint of the words from quid clamas to iniquitatis tuae in this way, but supposes the omission to have been intentional (“videlicet quia secundo dicitur “propter multitudinem,” etc., et qui scribebant a principio additum putaverunt”). It is extraordinary how trifling a case of homoeoteleuton may lead to a lengthy omission. For example, the mere occurrence of the syllable que in two similarly-ending lines (v. 507 and v. 509) of the speech of an undutiful son in the Bacchides, “nam jám domum ibo atque áliquid surrupiám patri.“teque dum procedis, io Triumphe!
non semel dicemus, io Triumphe!
civitas omnis dabimusque divis tura benignis,
”
id istí dabo. ego istanc múltis ulciscár modis.
adeo égo illam cogam usque út mendicet méus pater,
” has been enough to occasion the loss of the intervening words in the Ambrosian Palimpsest, which presents the passage in this form: “nam jám domum ibo atque út mendicet méus pater
”, —a line which, curiously enough, is metrically correct, and which, so far as metre is concerned, offers no indication that anything has been lost. The case of mere words or syllables being omitted through homoeoteleuton is almost as common. Manuscripts of Aulus Gellius i. 4. 8 offer enutabatque for enodabat dijudicabatque. And in
, the repetition of the syllable -is has caused the omission of captis in some MSS.
Other causes for omissions
Of the causeless omission of a line, like the causeless omission of the word juris in the passage quoted above (§ 9), an example will be found in Cas. 376—a line which was omitted, for no apparent reason, in the original of BD (the archetype of VEJ, p. 7), and which would have remained unknown to us had not the corrector of B (p. 41) added it in the margin. A change of copyist may be accompanied by the omission of a line or lines. At Merc. 961, for example, one of the copyists employed on the archetype ended his task. The new copyist began his task at v. 963 instead of v. 962, but rectified his error immediately, with the result that in our MSS. v. 962 follows v. 963. If the original of EJ began a new page, like B, at Epid. 271 nunc occasiost faciundi etc., the omission in EJ of the preceding lines (four in our editions, between two and three in the archetype) may be due to the fact that one of the copyists of the original laid down his pen too soon, before he had quite reached the end of the portion allotted to him. Some editors have attempted to reconstruct the archetype of MSS. of authors on the supposition that accidentally-omitted lines would naturally be the top or bottom lines of a page, lines occupying this position being liable to be over-looked by a scribe, or to become stained and illegible, or to be cut off by a binder. But the correctness of this supposition is doubtful.Omission of initial letter
The initial letter of a verse or chapter was usually painted, and would be left by the scribe for the rubricator or miniator to fill in. In many MSS., e.g. the Codex Ursinianus (D) of Plautus, these letters were never supplied, with the result that a copyist often wrongly emended the deficiency.5 This is why we find in MSS. of Hor. C. i. 19. 11 Aversis and Versis for Et (probably written ē, ch. vii. § 1） versis; C. i. 18. 15 Attollens for Et tollens; C. iv. 5. 7 Effulsit for Affulsit.List of Examples
Additional examples of omission:— (1) of word by Haplography:- Cas. 556 “síquid ejus éssct, essct mécum postulátio” (A: ejus esset mecum P).
- Cas. 600 “tuam arcéssituram esse úxorem uxorém meam” (A: esse uxorem meam P).
- Epid. 245 “ínquit altera ílli: ibi illa nóminat Stratíppoclem” (illi ibi illi A: illi ibi P).
- Mil. 606 “átque eadem, quae illís voluisti fáccre, illi faciúnt tibi” (A: omits; illi P).
- Capt. 447 “ét tua et tua húc ornatus réveniam ex senténtia” (P: et tua huc OJ).
- Merc. 565 “quid fáciam? Quod opust fácto, facito ut cógites” (B: opust facto ut CD).
- Merc. 765 “non, nón te odisse aiébat, sed uxorém suam” (AB: non te CD).
- Mil. 837 “bonó subpromo et prómo cellam créditam” (om. et promo CD).
- Poen. 921 “nunc si eadem hie iterum iterem inscitiast” (A: hic iterum inscitiast P).
- The omission is deliberate in Amph. 723: “énimvero praegnáti oportet ét mălum et mālúm dari”, where the second et malum, rightly copied by the scribe, has been subsequently erased in D.
- Mil. 1171 revcrearis A, revearis P.
- Mil. 1412 verberabere A, verberare P.
- Mil. 1172 formam amoenitatem A, formamoenitatis P.
- Capt. 907 pro praefectura mea A, praefecturam et P.
- Epid. 231 crocotulam A, crutulam BJ.
- In Nonius 34.10 “everriculum genus est retis, a verrendo dictum: vel quod trahatur, vel quod, si quid fuerit piscium nactum, everrat”, the Leyden MS. has rightly vel quod si quid, but its direct copy, the Laurentian, has vel si quid with omission of quod. In 37.17 qui inscriptum of the Leyden MS. is copied as quin scriptum.
- A syllable has been omitted, but not through haplography, by the Laurentian scribe in 198. 6, where he has written caniculam for the canaliculam of his Leyden original.
- Cas. 804 “nám quid illaec tám diu intus rémorantur remelígines?” (A: om. remeligines P).
- Epid. 95 “át enim— bat enim: níhil est istue: pláne hoc corruptúmst caput” (A: om. at enim bat enim P).
- Mil. 205 “déxterum. ita veheménter eicit: quód agit aegre súppetit” (A: om. cicit P).
- Truc. 148 “copia hic”. This was written in P copiac lic (through misreading the letter H of the original, ch. vi. § 1), which has been faithfully copied by B, while CD leave a blank space after copiac.
- Poen. 900 “Carthagine” (A). This was miswritten in P, and appears in CD as sariagine, while B leaves a blank space.
- Asin. 438 “trapezitam”. This was written in the original et rapezitam, and is so reproduced by B, while D has et rape followed by a blank space. In the original of EJ it was transcribed in the form et rapere ita.
- Merc. 687 “quamveis”. This, the spelling in A, was apparently also the form in P. In B it appears as quamvis, but in the original of CD as quam, with omission of the unintelligible veis.
- Truc. 215 “verum ápud hunc mea era súa consilia súmma eloquitur líbere” (A: om. sua P).
- Truc. 216 “magisque ádeo ei consiliárius hic amícust quam auxiliárius” (om. ei A).
- Poen. 893 “fácile. Fac ergo id fácile noscam ego, út ille possit nóscere” (A: om. ego P).
- Pseud. 375 “si íd non adfert, pósse opinor fácere me officiúm meum” (A: om. me P).
- Cas. 47 “postquam éa adolevit ád eam aetatem, út viris （A: om. ca P） placere posset.”
- Epid. 225 “quid istuc tam mirabile est?” (A: om. tam P).
- Mil. 791 “ítaque eam huc ornátam adducas: éx matronarúm modo” (A: om. ex P).
- Mil. 1138 “neminem pol video” (P: om. pol A).
- In Nonius 38.24 (a line of Lucilius) “quídni et tu idem inlítteratum me átque idiotam díceres?” the scribe of the Laurentian MS. has omitted et tu of its Leyden original; in 19. 2 the scribe of the Harleian MS., a direct copy of the Laurentian, has written qua for in qua.
- In the original of CD
was omitted, the previous line (v. 903) having the same ending longior. In the same original the equivalent of a line was omitted in a passage of the Rudens (vv. 470-1) from the same cause: “nusquam hércle equidem illam vídeo: ludos mé facit.“haéret haec res, síquidem ego absens súm quam praesens lóngior,
”
adpónam hercle urnam jám ego hanc in mediá via,
” where CD read: “nusquam hercle urnam jam ego hanc in media via”, omitting all the words from equidem to the second hercle.
The similar beginning (ego and eo, ch. v. § 12) of Alcumena's two remarks led to the loss of all the words between illum and eo in the original of BDEJ. They are added by the corrector in B (p. 41).“AMPH.
Quíd nunc, mulier? aúdin illum?
ALC.
Ego véro, ac falsum dícere.
AMPH.
Néque tu illi neque míhi viro ipsi crédis?
ALC.
Eo fit, quía mihi
plúrumum credo.
”- Cas. 570 “nam méo quidem animo, qui ádvocatos ádvocet” (A). The line is omitted in P. The preceding line ends with advocaverit.
- Mil. 852 “non hércle tam istoc válide cassabánt cadi”. This line, found in P, is omitted in A. The preceding line ends with sistebant cadi.
- Aul. 426 was omitted in the original of V(E)J, because it has the same ending, caput sentit, as v. 425.
- Epid. 81-85. The repetition of nunc quo in these two lines has led to the omission of the whole intervening passage in the original of VEJ.
- Mil. 727-9. The homoeoteleuton and homoeoarchon of these lines has led to omission, but fortunately not to the same omission, in the Ambrosian Palimpsest, in the archetype of our minuscule MSS., and in some early MS. of Nonius, where this passage is quoted (p. 415 M.) (see the critical apparatus of the Ritschl edition of this play).
- Epid. 415 ends with divinam domi; v. 419 with divinam tibi domi. The original of BVEJ omitted vv. 416-9, which have been added in the bottom margin of B by the corrector (p. 41), with a sign h.p., answering to a sign h.d. in the text (cf. p. 35).
- Most. 625 “id, <id> volo mihi díci, id me scire éxpeto.”
- Capt. 772 “néc <quicquam> quoiquam hómini supplicáre nunc certúmst mihi.”
- Pseud. 240 “mane, máne: jam ut voles med ésse, ita ero. Nunc tú sapis, <nunc tu sápiu's>.”
- Mil. 754 “quíd opus fuit hoc <súmpto> sumptu tánto nostra grátia?”
- Pseud. 1022 “si occásionem cápsit, qui <sic> sít malus” (cf. v. 1130 “sic scelestu's”).
- Most. 445 “pultábo. heus, ecquis <ist> ist? aperitín foris?” (istist for isti est, “is there”).
- Capt. 275 “nam ád sapientiam hujus <hominis> nímius nugatór fuit.”
- Capt. 9-10 “eumque híne profugiens véndidit in Álide patri hújusce <hominis>: jám hoc tenetis? óptumest.”
- Poen. 83 “sed illi patruo hujus <hóminis>, qui vivít senex.”
” But P has: “humanum amarest, humanum autem ignoscere est.
” Perhaps the passage originally ran: “humánum amarest, húmanum autem ignóscerest.
humánum (? ego patior), átque id vi obtingít deum.
” In the Menaechmi, the Latin Comedy of Errors, at v. 278, P offers: “Menacchme, salve. Di te amabunt, quisquis ego sim.” But A shows two lines of which only the beginnings6 MENaechM and QVISQVISd are legible. I would restore the lines thus: “Menaéchme, salve. Dí te amabunt, quísquis es.
Quisquís! deliras. nón tu scis quis égo siem?
” The eye of the scribe of P seems to have wandered from the quisquis of v. 278 to the quis immediately below, in v. 279. In another passage of the same play (vv. 163 sq.) one of the Menaechmi hands the Parasite a cloak, and asks him if he can by smelling it guess who the owner is. After the line: “écquid tu de odóre possis, síquid forte olféceris”, P has the single line: “facere conjecturam captum sit collegium”; but A shows two lines of which only the first half can be read: “FACERECOIECTVRAmCVMi
Cuoi*S*ASVttVS.
” Here the eye of the scribe of P may have wandered from the conjecturam of v. 164 to the same or a similar word in v. 165, though no one has yet succeeded in making a satisfactory guess about the intervening words. In Truc. 38, the famous comparison of lovers to fish caught in a net: “dum huc, dum illuc rete † or impedit,
” the corruption or of the MSS. may be due to a blot having obscured the rest of the word in the original. I would restore to the passage the word orata, a goldfish (Festus 202 Th.), and read: “dum húc, dum illuc réte oratas ímpedit,
” with the same metrical hiatus of dum as in Cas. 612 of cum: “cum hác, cum istac, cúmque amica ctiám tua.” The missing word in Most. 802 (bacchiac metre) began with s. Was it supersedere? “miséricordiá supersedére hominem opórtet.
” Aul. 406 (the opening line of the scene) begins in the MSS. with the word Optati, which does not suit the sense. Some interjection seems to be required: ““Optati” cives, populares, incolae, accolae, advenae omnes,
dáte viam qua fúgere liceat, fácite totae pláteae pateant.
” I fancy it was Attatae, written with a common misspelling Aptatae (cf. p. 71) in the archetype, which in the original of our MSS. appeared as ptatae or ptati (the latter a grammatical correction, ch. i. § 9), with the initial letter left unsupplied by the “rubricator.”
